10 Ideas for Styling a Dresser

Fresh flowers are nature’s mood-lifter, so put them where you’ll see them when you first open your eyes—often that’s the top of your dresser. If flowers are out of reach, try a small potted plant or low-maintenance succulent. The little bit of life will wake up your room, if not you.

The bedroom is the ideal place to display your favorite family snapshots—why not go all out and create a shrine to the keepsakes and people who make you who you are? Start with a few photos (framed or not) and add meaningful items around them. Confine the collection to a tray or large stack of books to keep it tidy.

A dresser is tailor-made for showcasing a collection. Be it first editions, bird figurines, or earthy pottery, the limited display area on a dresser is like a spotlight. No formal collection? The confines of the dresser top will make disparate things that share a color or material look like one anyway.

Kids love to do their own decorating and the dresser is a perfect place to let them try it out. To keep a handle on the final result, anchor their display of stuffed animals, Legos, or crafts with one or two large items, like the globe and trophy in this bedroom. They’ll add polish to the jumble that finds its way to the top.

If styling a full dresser seems daunting, break it up into three parts. Fill one part with one large object—the lamp is a practical addition here. Then create small vignettes in each of the other two parts. Keep everything in roughly the same palette and you can’t go wrong. For extra credit, hang art but think of it as part of the greater whole, positioning it a little off-center to tie together the items on the dresser.

When your dresser is a vintage piece with pedigree, it doesn’t need much gilding. A small sculptural piece and period ceramic is truly enough. To make this spare look work, choose items with presence, either because of their interesting shape or handmade quality. Anything generic or mass-made will fall flat.

A minimalist display injects your bedroom with a bit of Zen. Remember the rule of threes: A trio of objects of differing sizes and shapes appears balanced (and therefore, pleasing) to the eye. Add a soft item such as a flower or even a pretty ribbon to the display to keep it from looking stark.

Take over your dresser with the items that inspire you most, like a personal curio cabinet or mood board. This maximalist approach relies largely on trial and error but two rules of thumb will get you started: Frame the tableau with the two largest pieces, like a pair of table lamps or large vases. Then thread a single color throughout the array to unify the collection.

Dressers are inherently full of hard angles. A collection of shapely ceramics and accessories embodies that all-important design principle: contrast. This is often why a dresser with a framed photo or stack of books looks amateur—the items simply need something spherical to give them a lift.

Engage in a little smoke and mirrors by ignoring the top of the dresser entirely in favor of a gallery wall hung above it. We love this approach in a kid’s room, where their art classes and craft projects supply you with an endless stream of personality-filled pieces to hang. But the tactic applies to a grown-up room, too.